RIYADH: Special prayers to mark an annular eclipse in Saudi Arabia were held in mosques throughout the Kingdom on Friday morning.
Yet turnout for the special salatul kusuf was very low since it was a weekend.
“Most people were fast asleep at home and this was the only resting day in the week,” said resident Abdullah, who had come to offer his special prayers at the Jumma Mosque in Nasseriyah yesterday.
The Imam at the mosque described salatul kusuf as an optional prayer that would reward those who performed it. The Muslim community in congregation performs the prayer when there is a solar or lunar eclipse.
There was a solar eclipse on the day that the Prophet Muhammad’s (peace be upon him) son Ibrahim died.Some superstitious people claimed that the sun eclipsed because of the young child’s death and the Prophet’s sadness on that day.
The Prophet corrected this, saying their understanding of the phenomenon was wrong.
“The sun and the moon are two signs amongst the signs of Allah. They do not eclipse because of someone’s death or life. So when you see them, invoke Allah and pray till the eclipse is clear,” he said.
In Dammam, the Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Center for Science and Technology (Saitk), which is based in the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, allowed visitors to view the eclipse through a telescope, using special eclipse glasses.
According to the BBC, the annular eclipse exceeded 11 minutes when viewed from the countries near the Indian Ocean – a record for the millennium. Such a long eclipse will not be seen until 3043.
The annular eclipse, where the entire sun is obscured by the moon except for a blazing ring of light around the perimeter, was visible over a 300km wide track that encompassed half the earth.
The last full annular solar eclipse seen in the Arabian Peninsula was in 1763.
